Process for day-to-day tasks, planning

Hi DeadDuck,

Your approach of starting with a Scrum-based process for your small Cloud Engineering team is a sensible choice, but you've rightly noted that Scrum may not be the best fit when there's a significant amount of unplanned work involved.

To address this challenge, you have a couple of options.

One approach is to consider a hybrid methodology called ScrumBan, which combines elements of Scrum and Kanban. With ScrumBan, you retain the sprint-based structure but also allow for a continuous flow of work. During each sprint, you plan the work you want to accomplish while leaving room for unplanned tasks. As these unplanned tasks arise, they're added to the backlog and prioritized. When there's capacity, the team can work on these unplanned items. This approach provides greater flexibility to handle unforeseen work while still benefiting from the structure of Scrum, including regular planning and retrospectives.

Another option is to adopt a Kanban-only process, where there are no sprints, and work is handled continuously. Tasks are visualized on a Kanban board with columns like "To do," "In progress," and "Done." Kanban offers maximum flexibility, making it suitable for teams dealing with frequent unplanned work. However, coordinating work between different teams may be more challenging in a Kanban setup.

The choice between these approaches should depend on your specific requirements and preferences. If you're dealing with a significant amount of unplanned work, a hybrid approach like ScrumBan is worth considering. On the other hand, if your unplanned work is minimal, a pure Kanban approach might be a better fit.